The second component of our growth target is profitability. We aim to improve our EBITA yearly and reach an EBITA of at least 10% of revenue in 2025.

In our strategy work, we have identified three key opportunities to grow:

• Market expansion, i.e. expanding into new markets where we currently do not yet operate in, 
• Service extension, i.e. extending our service portfolio and developing new services, and 
• Market growth, i.e. building on general martech market growth. 

Our key focus areas in driving growth are accelerating international growth, solving for the customer, investing in growth platform, people & networks, and supporting digital transformation acceleration. 

Focus area highlights in 2021:

• Growth: 
  • Organic revenue growth was 20.0% against the target of over 10% annually.
  • Our gross profit, measuring the volume of our own operations, grew by 15.8%.
  • The Digital 22 Online acquisition announced in December 2021 did not impact 2021 figures, but paves the way for M&A-based growth in 2022.
• Profitability:
  • Adjusted operating result, which describes the operational performance of our business, increased in 2021 to 1,074 thousand euros from 337 thousand euros in 2020 and  -2,065 thousand euros in 2019.

Our foresight and insight services help our customers understand what drives the future and how they can make an impact. Our employees share their insights, best practices and examples in various blogs and webcasts that we share on our website. In 2021, two new concepts were launched to further support our thought leadership target: 

• Tomorrowtalks is Avidly's future- and solution-oriented talk show designed to foster insight into sustainable business. The first episode was aired in November 2021.
• Avidly Academy is an educational forum for sharing fresh insight, eye-opening ideas and practices, and concrete methods to our clients. It includes our most recent and popular webinars and marketing guides. The Avidly Academy is in soft-launch stage and will be rolled-out in full during 2022.

We measure our thought leadership development by monitoring our status in the martech industry. Recognitions received, number of inbound leads, interest toward Avidly as a partner, employer or as an investment are all important signals to us on how we are doing. 

Focus area highlights in 2021:

• Recognitions received:
  • HubSpot Global Partner of the year status in 2021 for the third time in a row.
  • 2022 Premier Partner status in the Google Partners programme.
  • The campaign created by Avidly for its client Saka won a bronze medal in the Effie Finland competition, which measures the effectiveness of advertising. Another campaign made for our client Äänekoski Energy was also shortlisted.
  • The Sustainability Communication Research Tool, conceptually developed and implemented by Avidly for the largest corporate responsibility network in the Nordic countries FIBS was one of the finalists in the Finnish Comms Awards in the Sustainability Communication Series.
• Increased number of both inbound leads and open job applications.
• Service offering: foresight and insight services relaunched.
• Launch of Tomorrowtalks and soft-launch of Avidly Academy.
• Avidly brand renewal and own marketing actions.

Our company philosophy, Tomorrowbound thinking, is built on our values that are courage, respect and ambition. Tomorrowbound thinking is our moral compass that guides our everyday work, and inspires us to think forward to make tomorrow better for both people and companies. 

At the heart of Tomorrowbound is the idea of challenging the present – doing things differently, more wisely, more optimistically. It encourages us to embrace the explorer mindset, to recognise our colleagues and clients, and to have fun at work. It also encourages us to be ambitious, because that is a prerequisite for delivering our customer promise, i.e. impact. We have to challenge our ideas every single day, and also find better and better solutions to speed up the desired change. 

As a part of driving a positive change within Avidly, we continued in 2021 our initiatives and practices that promote continuous development, finding new ideas and insights and personal growth, such as our Competence Groups that spread the knowhow inside our company and CX Sauna, a new idea incubator. We also developed our leadership practices and introduced at the beginning of 2021 the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) based leadership model that is based on collaborative goal-setting to track individual, team and company level progress and to create alignment and encourage engagement around measurable goals. In the last quarter of the year we also implemented organisational changes with renewed leadership roles. These changes were in part based on employee feedback to better answer the needs of our employees and the company.

Building psychological safety, developing employee autonomy and shifting leadership gradually towards coaching leadership will continue to be our focus themes also in 2022. We will also continue to develop personal competencies and employee autonomy and focus on career planning. Additionally, integrating the Digital 22 Online team to Avidly will be a focus area in the first half of 2022. 

Focus area highlights in 2021:

• eNPS 20 (19 in 2020).
• Average number of employees 237 (228 in 2020).
• Leadership model development and OKR model introduction.
• Main HR framework improvements. 
  • Career paths and harmonizing role descriptions.  
  • Skills-mapping and capability analysis.
  • New onboarding and recruitment processes.
• Competence mentor program launched.
• Continued actions to take care of employee safety and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Different wellness initiatives in Avidly countries. In Finland, for example, employees can spend 2 hours per month  on wellness activities of their choice.
• Introduction of internal, monthly newsletter.
• In Finland, employees were given two extra days off during Christmas as a reward for achieving the country level targets for 2021.  

To better serve our customers, we focused in 2021 on developing our service offering. In spring 2021 we launched Avidly Growth Platform to our client with its two parts, TomorroWave and Opportunity Map. The TomorroWave is a tool our clients can use to analyse, develop and manage marketing and sales. It is based on analysing current customer experience and finding the key areas of development. Due to its scalability, it can be used when creating marketing strategies, campaigns or content. It also provides a framework for their measurement and data-oriented development. TomorroWave is discussed in detail here.

Avidly Opportunity Map, on the other hand, helps in seizing the growth opportunities by creating unique combinations of actions to drive growth. The Avidly Opportunity map has 3+1 layers around its center; the TomorroWave. First, there are the four opportunities a company can start building their growth on: Build winning strategies and commercialization, Create impactful customer experiences, Maximise the benefits of tech and data, and Enable market and organisational growth. The second layer consists of different capabilities that can be identified for each opportunity. And the third layer consists actions – or services from Avidly’s point of view – how we together can reach the impact we want.  Opportunity map is discussed in detail here. 

In addition to Avidly Opportunit Map development and launch, several action taken in developing One Avidly have contributed to better client experience, for example renewed sales and service processed and standardisation of Avidly services across teams and countries.

Focus area highlights in 2021:

• Avidly measures its client satisfaction regularly. In December, the Group’s NPS was 60.
• The share of continuous services increased to 47 % (42 %) in 2021. 
• New clients represented approximately 30% of the orders received in 2021.

Please see some of our client cases here.

The building block in developing and harmonising our internal and external processes and to deliver on our four strategic goals above include:

• Avidly brand (recognition)
• Marketing (leads and awareness)
• Strategy (direction and resources)
• Management system (strategy framework, development streams, BI, financials)
• Financial infrastructure (planning, budgeting, financing, controller and accounting)
• Offering (positioning, extensions and skill-gap management)
• Sales (CRM, leads, deals, development and coordination)
• Delivery (competence pool, partner and quality management, frameworks)
• Rescue Rangers (project recovery, conflict solving, financing)
• Being local but global (a true growth partner, local market knowledge)
• HR (people, recruiting, training)
• IT (strategy, infrastructure and maintenance)

In each area, processes, tools and responsibilities have been developed, reforced or redefined. The work around these building blocks continues in 2022. 

Focus area highlights in 2021:

• Improved brand recognition.
• New crystallized service offering: Avidly Growth Platform. 
• Redesigning Group’s management team: new CTO, CXO and  COO roles.
• Group wide quality standards built. 
• Redesign of Avidly tech organization - one international team.
• Avidly Finland restructuring - new leadership model from 2022 onward.
• Avidly Sweden and Norways restructured to operate as one entity.
• Avidly Germany restructuring - new leadership from March 2022 onward.
• Cross-studio collaboration processes crystallized leading to increase in the number of cross-boarder projects.
• BI & ERP roll-outs.